Several existing projects have shown promise in using robot-assisted interventions for social and academic skills teaching with autistic children, including emotion recognition. Dr. Alyssa Alcorn presents The DE-ENIGMA Horizon2020 project, which seeks to extend and “scale up” the available evidence in this area, comparing a robot-focused and human-focused emotion teaching programme across a large sample of autistic children in London and Belgrade. These children (age 5-12), represent a wide range of ability and include many children with intellectual disabilities and limited language, who are often excluded from educational technology research.
This talk will give some background on the rationale for using humanoid robots with autistic children, present some initial results from DE-ENIGMA’s first year of studies, and reflect on what we have learned—both with the robot, and in the associated background and qualitative work with schools, parents, and families.